He’d taken off his glasses and was absently rubbing the sides of his jeans with nervous palms. He stood next to Thane and Zel for a moment before speaking. “You’re…Thane, right?”
Thane nodded, cautiously.
“Zel,” Zel said holding his hand out.
Callum nodded again before taking it with a firm grip, then awkwardly dropped into the seat beside the window. He sat forward, elbows on his knees, hands clenched tight. Thane and Zel hesitated for a second before following his example.
“We’re twins,” he said suddenly, with a self-deprecating huff. “Me and Cormac. Identical, if you can believe that. Fee…Faolan is our baby sister.” His voice cracked slightly.
“I work for the National Cyber Security Centre. It’s part of GCHQ-tech authority on cybersecurity; you must be familiar with it. And the big musclehead over there is Cormac—my older twin by five minutes and somehow the size of a small SUV. He’s NCA, and was field staff for years. He’s finding his way into management now and, weirdly, liking it.”
Thane managed a flicker of a smile. “I’m so sorry,” he said, quietly. “For everything. For her. For…”
“How am I going to face her?” he whispered after a moment. “What if I never get to? She mentioned her brothers… I remember her talking about you.”
Callum’s eyes met his, and he gave a small nod. “You remember?”
“I haven’t forgotten anything,” Thane said. “Not a second. I owe her. We all owe her for saving our lives. She helped keep us sane.”
“If it’s not too much…” he hesitated, meeting Callum’s eye. “Would you tell me how you found her? We searched for years.”
Callum went quiet, as if lost in his thoughts. “We blamed ourselves,” he said, very softly. “How could we not?”
Thane looked at him sharply, but Callum’s eyes were distant.
“It was hell at home. Our parents were…they were not good people. We told the teachers—we thought that was the right thing. We thought it was the right thing for Fee. She was so small, and we couldn’t protect her. We didn’t expect social services to split us up. They sent all three of us to different foster homes. We weren’t allowed to contact her or each other after that: no calls, no visits. To make things easier, they said.”
His voice dropped to a near whisper. “Home was bad, but that…that was worse. Faolan was so fragile. A ray of sunshine, you know? Sweet. Always smiling, always trying to make the best of things. And smart as a whip, she was. She could recite whole books. She has a photographic memory.”
He cleared his throat. “We both eventually got placed with a man named Arthur Clements. He had contacted Cormac’s social worker at the time and somehow made it happen. He was investigating child trafficking, quietly, as a special case. He applied for special permission to take both of us in. He waskind. A bit rigid, but decent. He dug up Faolan’s disappearance. We had no idea about Faolan at first. We didn’t know until two weeks after she had disappeared.”
Callum glanced sideways, voice hoarse. “For the longest time, we thought she was dead. Everyone did. And then there was the report—a body. But it wasn’t her; it was someone called Dorothy? When we found out they did some tests, but the body was too badly burnt, the link was never made. Dad…Arthur…thought it was a false lead and abandoned it.”
He swallowed hard. “But four months later, we found her.”
Thane leaned in slightly, heart pounding.
“They’d taken her and transported her before the fire. She suffered for four more months. But one night, another victim who had managed to escape reported one of their houses. And that’s why she is still”—his voice cracked for a second—“alive.”
He looked at Thane then, raw and tired. “That’s how she got out. Author went to get her. She was barely skin and bones. She wouldn’t say much at first. She would not speak, not even to us. But Arthur…he recognized something in her. And he fought to keep her with us. We protected her and raised her.”
He didn’t mean to imply anything, but Thane felt like he should have said,unlike you.
He deserved to hear that.
Callum gave a shaky breath. “She survived, Thane. But she’s carried the weight alone for years.”
Thane’s throat burned.
And all he could think was,I didn’t find her.
Before he could ask anything else, the automatic sliding doors opened with a soft hiss.
A young man in dark green scrubs stepped in, mask pulled down, surgical cap askew, stubble across his jaw. He looked like he’d been in that operating theatre for days. His eyes swept the room, scanning for someone.
Cormac was on his feet before the door had even finished closing. Callum stood up just behind him, both moving like springs released. Thane, Zel, and Jac followed.
“We’re Faolan’s brothers,” Cormac said quickly, his voice wobbling over her name.
